Though it has been June 20th since Samantha has posted on the webpage, I feel secure that when she has new things to report there will be a prompt entry. She does need time to focus on her work, perhaps even a little down time for herself.

As for that June 20th entry - she answers 21 questions.
And its well worth the viewing if you’re interested in what is happen regarding the science of observing, recording, understanding this Gulf of Mexico catastrophe.

I checked on Professor Samantha Joye’s website this morning and am happy to report that August first she updated the blog.

... The Deepwater Horizon wellhead that tapped the Macondo reservoir was capped on 15 July 2010. After the venting of oil and gas into the Gulf waters was stopped, everyone felt a sense of relief. Multiple news outlets have reported that the surface oil has disappeared, for the most part. I read many reports that stated conclusively the oil had been either transferred to the atmosphere (via evaporation) or that it had been consumed by oil-eating microorganisms. Everyone’s reaction was, not surprisingly, ‘what a relief !!’.

Should we be relieved? Is this disaster over?

On the whole, I believe the answer to both questions is no. It is a relief that the volume of surface oil is reduced, as this lowers the probability of oil-fouling of coastal beaches and marshes. However, it’s likely that a great deal of oil is still out there in the Gulf of Mexico’s waters, it’s just no longer visible to us.

While some of the oil has most certainly evaporated, much of it was dispersed and this oil is still floating around, invisible to our eyes, within the ocean’s water column. Some of the oil has probably sedimented to the seafloor, where it is also invisible to our eyes. The fact that this oil is “invisible” makes it no less of a danger to the Gulf’s fragile ecosystems. Quite the contrary, the danger is real and the danger is much more difficult to quantify, track and assess…

Live @ AAAS - Samantha Joye on BP Oilspill Impact (Transcript)
At 11 a.m. EST on Monday, 21 February, Live @ AAAS will host a live chat here with Samantha Joye, who has tracked the oil and gas released by BP’s well. Joye will be available to discuss the role of microbes in digesting hydrocarbons and how oil has impacted coral and other life on the seafloor. http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/live-aaas—-samantha-joye-on-bp-.html

Mar. 14, 2013 — Oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill acted as a catalyst for plankton and other surface materials to clump together and fall to the sea floor in a massive sedimentation event that researchers are calling a “dirty blizzard.”

Jeff Chanton, the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University, is one of the members of the Deep-C Consortium who presented the dirty blizzard hypothesis at a recent conference in New Orleans that focused on the effects of the oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.

The dirty blizzard phenomenon may explain what happened to some portion of the more than 200 million gallons of spilled oil. Microbes likely processed most of the oil within months of the spill, but government assessments have not accounted for all of the spilled oil.

“Some of the missing oil may have mixed with deep ocean sediments, creating a dirty bathtub effect,” Chanton said. “The sediments then fell to the ocean floor at a rate 10 times the normal deposition rates. It was, in essence, an underwater blizzard.”

The oily sediments deposited on the sea floor could cause significant damage to ecosystems and may affect commercial fisheries in the future, he said. . .

May 1, 2013 — Crude oil toxicity continued to sicken a sentinel Gulf Coast fish species for at least more than a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to new findings from a research team that includes a University of California, Davis, scientist.

With researchers from Louisiana and South Carolina, the scientists found that Gulf killifish embryos exposed to sediments from oiled locations in 2010 and 2011 show developmental abnormalities, including heart defects, delayed hatching and reduced hatching success. The killifish is an environmental indicator species, or a “canary in the coal mine,” used to predict broader exposures and health risks.
The findings, posted online in advance of publication in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, . . .

Yeah CC, and how have you liked BP smearing all available media outlets with their repentant, oily, PR campaigns?
As much as I want to hate it, I have to realize that you and I are BP oil.
Ecology will continue to take a backseat to progress long after oil runs out.

Yeah CC, and how have you liked BP smearing all available media outlets with their repentant, oily, PR campaigns?
As much as I want to hate it, I have to realize that you and I are BP oil.
Ecology will continue to take a backseat to progress long after oil runs out.

You’re probably right about that. Meanwhile our ecosystem is not taking our stance well.
e.g., # of tornadoes annually has been on an upward trend since 1975. And in the past week or so, a couple of F4’s have already hit pretty close to home, down here.

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As a fabrication of our own consciousness, our assignations of meaning are no less “real”, but since humans and the fabrications of our consciousness are routinely fraught with error, it makes sense, to me, to, sometimes, question such fabrications.